[raditechman]

A few observations.
In the 1950’s as more people had TV’s at home, cinema attendance rapidly declined. To “fight” the opposition the cinema industry had to have something different to entice people back to the theatres.
The first to be used was 3D, which for a couple pf years attracted audiences back. However it was a problem for cinema owners as the best system back then used both of the projectors in the box running together with the motors locked one showing the left image and the other the right image with a polarizing filter fitted after the lens. (there was a not so good cheaper system with both images printed on one film and colour used for separation). The public did not like wearing spectacles and the novelty soon wore off. Stereo sound was used with some 3D films.
20th Century Fox decided to bring out a wide screen format using an anamorphic lens to squeeze the image horizontally during filming onto normal 35mm film frame. The early anamorphic lenses tended to curve verticals slightly at the extreme horizontal edges of the image. Slightly curved screens were sometimes used to improve brightness at the side of the screen.
The only changes the theatre owner had to make were a new “wide “ screen, anamorphic lenses, and if stereo sound was used extra amps and speakers plus a magnetic sound head which would be fitted to the projector before between the top spool and the gate. As the films sprocket holes were made smaller to make room for the magnetic stripe on stereo prints smaller teeth had to be used in the projector. The smaller sprocket holes were called Fox Holes. Many theatres did not trouble to put in stereophonic sound at the time.
Later Paramount Pictures bough out there own wide screen format called VistaVision, this meant they did not have to pay royalties to Fox for the Cinemascope format.
VistaVision used the normal 35mm film but the camera and the projector ran the film horizontally with normal lenses. No squeezing. This gave good results without the distortion of verticals at sides of screen. Very few cinemas had projector ‘s fitted to show horizontal film so most VistaVision release prints went our as normal film but with the frame cropped to the widescreen VistaVision format.
These prints were of remarkably good quality and still show up well when shown on TV today.
Cinemascope was eventually superseded by Panavision which used the same squeezing system but the lens were much improved and the vertical distortion problem eliminated.
As for Super 16mm. Technicolor decided to bring out a widescreen system called Techniscope.
This used 35mm film but the camera had a two sprocket pull down and therefore two wide images could be placed on the area of the old 4 sprocket pull down frame. During processing the image would be optically changed to a squeezed normal 35mm print, cinemas just showed it using normal anamorphic lens. The advantages of this system were that during filming only half as much film was needed, it also did not have the vertical distortion problems that early CinemaScope suffered.
So the half frame system had been used before the days of super 16.

TV seems to follow cinema with colour, stereo, 3D and widescreen all being introduced to make more money, not as with the cinema with increased audiences but with new TV sales.

John